Tennessee Seeks $13 Million Raise for CoreCivic, Despite Violations
The Tennessee Department of Correction (DOC) is asking Gov. Bill Lee (R) to increase the state’s contract with private prison profiteer CoreCivic, Inc. by $13 million.
On November 4, 2025, DOC head Frank Strada presented an annual budget request for the agency that nearly doubled the amount of money Tennessee paid to CoreCivic in 2024. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p. 17.] The Nashville-based company operates four prisons in Tennessee: the South Central Correctional Facility, Hardeman County Correctional Facility, Whiteville Correctional Facility, and the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), the largest prison in the state.
CoreCivic’s potential pay bump comes despite the fact the company has been fined more than $44 million over the last three years for a litany of contract violations, such as longstanding staff vacancies, prisoners being improperly placed in solitary, and skipped medical care visits. TTCC, in particular, has come under fire for a long record of assaults, murders, and understaffing in the decade since it first opened in 2016. Last year, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was launching a civil rights investigation into the troubled TTCC as a result of the rampant abuses. [See: PLN, March 2025, p. 36.]
While the status of the DOJ investigation is uncertain given that the vast majority of the employees at the agency’s civil rights division have been fired or left under the Trump administration, the problems at TTCC have scarcely declined. In June of this year, a riot occurred at the facility, during which three prisoners and one guard were injured. Public officials began calling for the state to take control of TTCC; the district attorney for Trousdale County, for example, claimed that a new criminal conduct charge from the prison emerged roughly every four days, demonstrating that “CoreCivic is unable to address the issues.”
According to the Tennessee Lookout, a non-profit news outlet that keeps a political spending database, CoreCivic is one of the largest lobbying groups in the state. From 2010 to 2014, CoreCivic spent $2.7 million on lobbying Tennessee legislators and an additional $1 million in campaign contributions. Gov. Lee has also personally benefited from CoreCivic money, receiving nearly $50,000 from the company during his two gubernatorial campaigns.
Additional sources: The Tennessean, WSMV 4
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